Pierce, Frank Richardson "Slicker"

One in Collier’s weekly series tagged “A short short story complete on this page.” As with much nautical fiction from the World War 2 era, Richardson’s tale contrasts American ingenuity with German sadism and cupidity. Young gun pointer’s rating aboard an armed American freighter is blown into the sea when his ship is torpedoed. He survives, clinging alone to flotsam and eventually encounters, also alone, though in a life raft, the German U-boat commander responsible for his ship’s sinking (the U-boat had been sunk by a last-minute, fortuitous gun barrage from the freighter). The German is armed. He is also physically cold, and demands the rating’s warm blue pea coat and clothing. The quick thinking American proposes a deal: his clothes for the yellow slicker the German is wearing (which, the rating believes, had been stolen from the freighter’s 1st Mate by the German after their vessels’ sinking). The German agrees, though without a last minute, unsucessful effort to shoot the young American. Soon after, the American is rescued, and it turns out that his rescue had been aided by the fact that the yellow slicker was visible to the Army Air Corps pilots flying overhead. As for the clothes that he had traded to the German: “A man in blue clothes on a gray raft or boat that’s floating on a blue sea, is hard to spot from the air.”